Smallville fic
After you've picked yourself up off the floor....
This is a sequel to Golgotha (and if you need a refresher you can find it here:
http://www.smallvillefanfic.com/archive/7/golgotha.html
Hegira: an escape from danger; a flight to a better place
He clung to her like a life preserver.
"It's all right, Clark."
Her voice was a whisper. She was someone he could trust. He reminded himself of it over and over in the days following his salvation. There were more doctors, more needles. He'd thought it was over. Despite their kindness, their gentle nature, he cringed from their touch, trembling. They couldn't know the truth about him. Chloe couldn't know either. Maybe he couldn't trust her. Maybe he couldn't trust anyone.
"He's fine," they said. "As far as we can tell. We don't know the long term effects of exposure to the type of radiation found in those meteorites."
He knew. Sickness, and death for him. Mutation for humans. She worried. He couldn't tell her not to. His tests had come back within human norms. It wasn't fine. He wasn't fine.
The word psychiatrist came up.
"I'm not crazy," he said, but he was.
Memory eluded him. Reality sometimes slipped sideways. Fear overwhelmed logic. He didn't want to go back there. He was afraid they would put him back, lock him in the room again. Not human. He wasn't human.
Alien. It was a cold word. Captivity had made him more aware of his own identity. He wasn't fine, he was sick, stripped of his abilities, poisoned. His weak body went along with his weak mind. He felt sluggish and stupid. Chloe talked to him, chattering. He didn't respond. The car didn't exist. She didn't exist. His home didn't exist. Alone among the stars, he drifted.
Fireflies.
"Look," Chloe said.
They weren't stars, but fireflies, golden pinpoints of light floating above an endless stretch of dark green leaves. There were thousands of them among the cornstalks. They glittered like diamonds, like stars. He stared out the car window. Space. So much space, stretching out for miles all around, the endless flow broken only by the random house or barn. There were no walls. No walls.
"We're almost home."
Home was in the stars. As vast as the fields were, they were nothing compared to the field of stars above their heads. He turned his face up toward the open sunroof. Once he could name their configurations, but that knowledge was lost in the churning fog of incoherent thought and broken shards of memory tumbling around in his head. Now he could only stare, admiring their beauty. He was still imprisoned, here, on this planet.
Powerless and alone. He couldn't get back to the stars.
"Powerless," he murmured. His brows dipped. Hadn't he once wanted just that? To be human? To be normal? If he'd been normal they wouldn't have taken him away.
Lost in confusion, he turned to the girl. Chloe, he reminded himself. Chloe. Her attention was on the road ahead. He desperately wanted to ask her his question. Fear held his tongue.
What am I?
"Tired," he answered himself. It was a safe answer.
"What?" Chloe spared him a concerned glance.
"I'm tired."
"It's been a long day, but we're almost home," she repeated.
Home. He had no concept of home anymore. For the past two years his home had been a bare room. His family had been cruel, emotionless drones, their faces hidden behind masks. Life was pain. Pain was life. Freedom was a dream. He was dreaming still.
"Clark," Chloe said, and he looked over at her. Her eyes were on the road, but her face was twisted with worry. Her gaze flickered right, quickly taking in his expression, or lack of one. "Are you going to be okay?"
He turned away. The fireflies danced, golden stars above the cornstalks. He answered her truthfully.
"No."
*********
They came to embrace him but he pulled away quickly, avoiding their touch. He didn't want to be touched, not anymore. Human hands had left scars on him, in more ways than one, and they weren't to be trusted. The hurt showed on their faces. Beneath the hurt he saw understanding.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, but he wasn't sure if that were true. It just sounded right. It produced the right results.
Martha nodded, smiling through her tears. "I have dinner waiting. All your favorites."
Tears glittered in Jonathan Kent's eyes too. Jonathan had failed, broken vows he'd taken many years past when he'd promised to keep his alien foundling from harm. He'd seemed so large, heroic, infallible, before. In two years he'd collapsed in upon himself. He was no longer the man he had been.
"Welcome home, son."
The silence was awkward. He filled it.
"I'm not your son," he said. It was a crushing blow. He hadn't meant it that way, and tried to explain. "He's dead."
Chloe wanted to leave. The Kents wanted her to leave too. He wouldn't let her, made her stay for the silent supper. The food was too much for him. For two years food had been only a means of survival. It was nutritionally sound, but bland and tasteless. The smell of Martha's meal alone made him ill. He ate very little.
"It's okay, honey," Martha said softly. "It's too soon."
They talked when they thought he wasn't listening, standing on the porch as Chloe finally made her escape.
"I feel a storm coming," Jonathan said. "Lex knows. He has to know the truth now Martha. What I don't understand is why he's waiting...."
"Maybe we were wrong not to trust him, Jonathan."
"No. We can't trust him."
So. Lex knew. He could go back to the room again, back to his prison, back to needles and pain and despair. This world was only temporary. Best not get used to it.
He slowly climbed the stairs. Instinct guided him, not memory. His door was open. So was the window. He crawled out onto the porch roof and sat there staring up at the stars. The room was too close, too confining. Reaching out a hand, he touched the sky. A sense of longing filled him.
Not free, he thought. I'm not free.
Martha found him there an hour later. She climbed out the window and sat down beside him. He flinched when she wrapped her arm around his and leaned her head upon his shoulder, but he did not pull away.
"We used to sit out here and look at the stars together, before your father built the loft room. Do you remember?"
"I don't know," he said. He saw a small boy, a book spread upon his knees, looking up at the sky to where the young Martha pointed. He didn't know if the memory were real, or something he dreamed. "Maybe."
"It will come back, Clark. You'll heal, we'll all heal."
Over dinner they had painted a beautiful picture, their words creating broad strokes of light and color, trying to recreate for him the life he'd lost. It was only an image. It was beautiful, but not real.
He thought of what he'd overheard. Lex knew the truth. He was free on borrowed time.
Maybe it would be better to remain dead.
********
A bird with clipped wings, he couldn't fly. His memories intruded on dead space. Chores had once been easier. Damaged flesh and broken spirit changed everything. He was now a prisoner in his own body. Calluses hurt, sprained muscles ached, eyes burned from the dust and the dirt and the bright yellow sun. The work gave him purpose. He did it without complaint.
Days had become weeks. Lex had not come for him, and every morning at breakfast he looked into Martha Kent's eyes and read her thoughts. They were pleading and pained.
"Live, Clark. Please. Live!"
No. He couldn't live. He couldn't reach out for the gold ring, because he knew the moment he did, it would be cruelly snatched away from him again. He couldn't live. He could only wait with back bent and shoulders tensed for the inevitable blow. There was no escape. If he ran, Lex had the resources to find him.
He waited, and he worked, and time moved forward.
School would be starting soon. He hadn't told them yet. He wouldn't be going. Not because he thought he couldn't catch up after two years, but because the cold, sterile world of the classroom was a frightening place for him. If the walls didn't restrain him, their rules would. He couldn't be restrained, not now. His freedom was too precious. It would be gone soon enough. Now was the time to savor it. On the farm he had space. He had things to do, but there were few rules to follow. There were no walls around him, only the limitations of his altered flesh.
"You just got too run down," Jonathan told him. "Your abilities will come back."
Jonathan said so, but they both had doubts.
His days became as routine as they'd been in the lab. Every day was the same. Get up, do chores, shower, eat breakfast, more chores, eat lunch, run errands, shower, eat dinner, go to bed. Tick, tick, tick, the dog days of summer clicked by one by one.
At the end of summer she came home.
Lana had been in Paris. Chloe told him. Chloe had written to her telling her Clark had been found, that he was home. Lana had a life in Paris. She had her studies and a new boyfriend. She left it all behind.
It was a week before she came out to the farm to see him, driving a brand new Jeep. He watched her get out of the car. Part of him hoped for some surge of life within him because he remembered her and remembered how she used to make him feel. Now he felt nothing. She was beautiful, even more beautiful than he remembered, dressed in chic black. Gone was the girl, here was the woman. He could have her if he wanted her. All he'd have to do is reach for that gold ring.
"Clark," she said.
She didn't rush to embrace him. He was grateful.
"Lana," he said quietly. There should have been more but he couldn't find it.
"I, uh, saw Chloe earlier. Her cousin is in town or she would have come."
Chloe would have made things less awkward. She understood the new Clark, Lana didn't. She only had memories of the old one. He wondered if they were good ones, or the ones where he lied to her, confused her, hurt her.
Lana squinted up into the sun as she studied his face. "Clark," she said finally. "What happened?"
He spoke softly. "I died. I came back."
"You were kidnapped."
"There's more than one way to die," he whispered.
Her expression twisted in pain. "But why....."
"I wasn't human." It came easier than he'd thought it would. "That's changed."
Really? Has it?
"I don't understand."
He looked down into her eyes. "Everything has changed. It will never be the same."
"I still love you," she said, and meant it. He could see it in her eyes.
Why then, had she gone to Paris? Why had she found another, while he died an agonizing death in a small, white room, far, far away?
"You loved a lie," he said softly. "And it no longer exists."
He walked away from her then, setting aside the tool he was using to weed Martha's garden. He walked away from her into the barn, silently climbing the stairs into the loft. For a moment he was afraid she would follow him. He waited, and heard the sound of a car engine.
She was gone, and he felt a spark, a spark of life in the form of pain. Burying his face in his hands, he slumped down to the couch, and gave way to grief.
He wanted to live again.
********
"I heard Lana came back with a new beau," Lex said quietly. Glass clinked. He poured himself a drink. It was a habit, not a drinking habit, but a thinking habit. As some people fluttered their hands as they spoke, Lex found it easier to gather his thoughts with a glass in his hand. "Have you met him?"
"No."
"Nice guy. I know his family. They'll take good care of her."
The conversation, if it could even be called that, ground to a halt. Lex quietly returned to his desk and sat down.
“What can I do for you, Clark?”
“Why are you waiting?” he demanded.
“Waiting for what?”
“You have the results of your father's research. I know you've looked at it.”
“Ah,” Lex said softly. He took a drink. “Yes. I did look at it. I'm sorry he put you through all that Clark. Maybe if you had trusted me I could have protected you.”
“I can't trust anyone.”
“Present tense.”
“Present tense. That's why I'm here.”
Lex regarded him carefully. He felt like a bug, a specimen, like he had when he'd been imprisoned. Lex had changed. They'd both changed.
“You think I'm going to reveal your secret to the world?” Lex chuckled. “And I do know your secret, Clark. My father didn't understand what his people were telling him. He presumed you were simply another sort of mutant. You aren't a mutant. You were never human, and you refused to tell them just what you are. I know something came to Earth during the meteor shower, something that wasn't a meteor. It was you, wasn't it?”
He didn't reply, and struggled to keep his fear at bay. “I'm still a prisoner,” he whispered.
A faint smile tugged at Lex's mouth. “Yes, you are.” He put his glass down on his desk. Glass on glass clinked. “Your abilities will come back.”
Bluntly: “I don't want them.”
“Perhaps not, but I do. A lot of people would. In fact, some people would be willing to put out a lot of money to buy them.” Lex leaned back in his chair. “And there's where my father was a fool. He spent two years studying you.” The smile returned. It was bad, that smile. “You've been telling me the truth all along haven't you? Clark Kent is nothing but a simple farm boy. Oh, but what's inside him...”
A chill ran up his spine. He wanted to turn away, not listen to what would come next. His fear screamed at him to run, run as far and as fast as he could away from Lex, away from Smallville, Kansas. He could not get back to the stars, but he could not stay here.
“We don't need you,” Lex said softly. “You see, I'm not unsympathetic to what you went through, Clark. It was entirely unnecessary for you to suffer like you did. When your body recovers from what my father's bungling methods did to it, I'll take it back.” Pausing, Lex allowed that to sink in before adding. “But we don't need you. You won't have to suffer again.”
He fled then, turning heel and all but running from the room, from the mansion. His lungs and limbs burned with his efforts as he jogged quickly down the curving drive toward the road. How long would it be before his abilities did come back? How long after that would it be before Lex came for him?
Lex was going to kill him. Clark wasn't so mind-addled not to have understood the implied threat. He would not be imprisoned the next time. The next time he would simply be killed and dissected.
He fled to the one person he thought could save him, who had saved him.
She had an apartment she shared with her cousin. Lois was out. Chloe brought him inside and got him something cold to drink. He'd run almost all the way into town. He couldn't stop his hands from shaking. She helped him hold the glass.
“Lex....” was all he managed before the dam broke.
He confessed to her everything he knew about himself, his homeworld, his life, his captivity. Every word was torture. Each day he'd spent trapped in that small white room had left a scar on him. He revealed them to her one by one as he told her the story of his slow spiral into madness.
“It's over, Chloe,” he concluded, his voice hoarse, his eyes burning. “My life here is over. They took it away, and I can never have it back. If I try, Lex will kill me.”
“Then you have to go,” she said.
Go. Go where?
“Chloe....”
She took his hand, urged him to his feet. “Come with me,” she said. “I have a secret of my own, Clark, and now that you've told me about yourself, everything makes perfect sense.”
********'
The crystal was the size of his palm, prism-shaped and unassuming. Polished quartz. A worry stone. Nothing special.
And yet....
Glittering light filled the hole in the cave wall like thousands of fireflies - or stars. Chloe had found his way back to the stars. They called to his wounded heart, his battered body, his crushed and damaged soul. He would be safe there among them.
He stood before the portal the crystal key had revealed. Silver light flowed over him, seemed to enter into him. For the first time in a very long time he felt warm again.
“It was a gift, from Jason to Lana,” Chloe said quietly. “I saw the symbol carved on it, recognized it as one of these....”
She stood behind him. He turned to look back over his shoulder.
“Just,” she said, tears filling her eyes and roughening her voice. “Don't forget me, okay?”
“Never,” he said softly.
My angel. My savior.
His gaze returned to the portal. Once committed, he could never go back. He could never again be human. Survival meant embracing his destiny and accepting himself for what he was - alien.
The stars beckoned him toward freedom.
All he had to do was let go - let go of Martha and Jonathan Kent, of the farm, Lana, Chloe, and....Clark.
“Clark....” Chloe whispered, but she did not beg him to stay. She urged him to go because she knew, because she loved him.
He took a step closer to the portal, and then another.
No more cold, white rooms. No more pain. No more fear.
Lex could not touch him. He would live again.
At the threshold he paused. She stood there behind him looking small, and frail - human.
He was so much more.
“I am Kal-el,” he said.
And returned to the stars.
He sent her a post card to let her know he was all right.
Chloe,
I'm finding myself. When I'm done, I'll be back.
Look up in the sky.
-CK
This is a sequel to Golgotha (and if you need a refresher you can find it here:
http://www.smallvillefanfic.com/archive/7/golgotha.html
Hegira: an escape from danger; a flight to a better place
He clung to her like a life preserver.
"It's all right, Clark."
Her voice was a whisper. She was someone he could trust. He reminded himself of it over and over in the days following his salvation. There were more doctors, more needles. He'd thought it was over. Despite their kindness, their gentle nature, he cringed from their touch, trembling. They couldn't know the truth about him. Chloe couldn't know either. Maybe he couldn't trust her. Maybe he couldn't trust anyone.
"He's fine," they said. "As far as we can tell. We don't know the long term effects of exposure to the type of radiation found in those meteorites."
He knew. Sickness, and death for him. Mutation for humans. She worried. He couldn't tell her not to. His tests had come back within human norms. It wasn't fine. He wasn't fine.
The word psychiatrist came up.
"I'm not crazy," he said, but he was.
Memory eluded him. Reality sometimes slipped sideways. Fear overwhelmed logic. He didn't want to go back there. He was afraid they would put him back, lock him in the room again. Not human. He wasn't human.
Alien. It was a cold word. Captivity had made him more aware of his own identity. He wasn't fine, he was sick, stripped of his abilities, poisoned. His weak body went along with his weak mind. He felt sluggish and stupid. Chloe talked to him, chattering. He didn't respond. The car didn't exist. She didn't exist. His home didn't exist. Alone among the stars, he drifted.
Fireflies.
"Look," Chloe said.
They weren't stars, but fireflies, golden pinpoints of light floating above an endless stretch of dark green leaves. There were thousands of them among the cornstalks. They glittered like diamonds, like stars. He stared out the car window. Space. So much space, stretching out for miles all around, the endless flow broken only by the random house or barn. There were no walls. No walls.
"We're almost home."
Home was in the stars. As vast as the fields were, they were nothing compared to the field of stars above their heads. He turned his face up toward the open sunroof. Once he could name their configurations, but that knowledge was lost in the churning fog of incoherent thought and broken shards of memory tumbling around in his head. Now he could only stare, admiring their beauty. He was still imprisoned, here, on this planet.
Powerless and alone. He couldn't get back to the stars.
"Powerless," he murmured. His brows dipped. Hadn't he once wanted just that? To be human? To be normal? If he'd been normal they wouldn't have taken him away.
Lost in confusion, he turned to the girl. Chloe, he reminded himself. Chloe. Her attention was on the road ahead. He desperately wanted to ask her his question. Fear held his tongue.
What am I?
"Tired," he answered himself. It was a safe answer.
"What?" Chloe spared him a concerned glance.
"I'm tired."
"It's been a long day, but we're almost home," she repeated.
Home. He had no concept of home anymore. For the past two years his home had been a bare room. His family had been cruel, emotionless drones, their faces hidden behind masks. Life was pain. Pain was life. Freedom was a dream. He was dreaming still.
"Clark," Chloe said, and he looked over at her. Her eyes were on the road, but her face was twisted with worry. Her gaze flickered right, quickly taking in his expression, or lack of one. "Are you going to be okay?"
He turned away. The fireflies danced, golden stars above the cornstalks. He answered her truthfully.
"No."
*********
They came to embrace him but he pulled away quickly, avoiding their touch. He didn't want to be touched, not anymore. Human hands had left scars on him, in more ways than one, and they weren't to be trusted. The hurt showed on their faces. Beneath the hurt he saw understanding.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, but he wasn't sure if that were true. It just sounded right. It produced the right results.
Martha nodded, smiling through her tears. "I have dinner waiting. All your favorites."
Tears glittered in Jonathan Kent's eyes too. Jonathan had failed, broken vows he'd taken many years past when he'd promised to keep his alien foundling from harm. He'd seemed so large, heroic, infallible, before. In two years he'd collapsed in upon himself. He was no longer the man he had been.
"Welcome home, son."
The silence was awkward. He filled it.
"I'm not your son," he said. It was a crushing blow. He hadn't meant it that way, and tried to explain. "He's dead."
Chloe wanted to leave. The Kents wanted her to leave too. He wouldn't let her, made her stay for the silent supper. The food was too much for him. For two years food had been only a means of survival. It was nutritionally sound, but bland and tasteless. The smell of Martha's meal alone made him ill. He ate very little.
"It's okay, honey," Martha said softly. "It's too soon."
They talked when they thought he wasn't listening, standing on the porch as Chloe finally made her escape.
"I feel a storm coming," Jonathan said. "Lex knows. He has to know the truth now Martha. What I don't understand is why he's waiting...."
"Maybe we were wrong not to trust him, Jonathan."
"No. We can't trust him."
So. Lex knew. He could go back to the room again, back to his prison, back to needles and pain and despair. This world was only temporary. Best not get used to it.
He slowly climbed the stairs. Instinct guided him, not memory. His door was open. So was the window. He crawled out onto the porch roof and sat there staring up at the stars. The room was too close, too confining. Reaching out a hand, he touched the sky. A sense of longing filled him.
Not free, he thought. I'm not free.
Martha found him there an hour later. She climbed out the window and sat down beside him. He flinched when she wrapped her arm around his and leaned her head upon his shoulder, but he did not pull away.
"We used to sit out here and look at the stars together, before your father built the loft room. Do you remember?"
"I don't know," he said. He saw a small boy, a book spread upon his knees, looking up at the sky to where the young Martha pointed. He didn't know if the memory were real, or something he dreamed. "Maybe."
"It will come back, Clark. You'll heal, we'll all heal."
Over dinner they had painted a beautiful picture, their words creating broad strokes of light and color, trying to recreate for him the life he'd lost. It was only an image. It was beautiful, but not real.
He thought of what he'd overheard. Lex knew the truth. He was free on borrowed time.
Maybe it would be better to remain dead.
********
A bird with clipped wings, he couldn't fly. His memories intruded on dead space. Chores had once been easier. Damaged flesh and broken spirit changed everything. He was now a prisoner in his own body. Calluses hurt, sprained muscles ached, eyes burned from the dust and the dirt and the bright yellow sun. The work gave him purpose. He did it without complaint.
Days had become weeks. Lex had not come for him, and every morning at breakfast he looked into Martha Kent's eyes and read her thoughts. They were pleading and pained.
"Live, Clark. Please. Live!"
No. He couldn't live. He couldn't reach out for the gold ring, because he knew the moment he did, it would be cruelly snatched away from him again. He couldn't live. He could only wait with back bent and shoulders tensed for the inevitable blow. There was no escape. If he ran, Lex had the resources to find him.
He waited, and he worked, and time moved forward.
School would be starting soon. He hadn't told them yet. He wouldn't be going. Not because he thought he couldn't catch up after two years, but because the cold, sterile world of the classroom was a frightening place for him. If the walls didn't restrain him, their rules would. He couldn't be restrained, not now. His freedom was too precious. It would be gone soon enough. Now was the time to savor it. On the farm he had space. He had things to do, but there were few rules to follow. There were no walls around him, only the limitations of his altered flesh.
"You just got too run down," Jonathan told him. "Your abilities will come back."
Jonathan said so, but they both had doubts.
His days became as routine as they'd been in the lab. Every day was the same. Get up, do chores, shower, eat breakfast, more chores, eat lunch, run errands, shower, eat dinner, go to bed. Tick, tick, tick, the dog days of summer clicked by one by one.
At the end of summer she came home.
Lana had been in Paris. Chloe told him. Chloe had written to her telling her Clark had been found, that he was home. Lana had a life in Paris. She had her studies and a new boyfriend. She left it all behind.
It was a week before she came out to the farm to see him, driving a brand new Jeep. He watched her get out of the car. Part of him hoped for some surge of life within him because he remembered her and remembered how she used to make him feel. Now he felt nothing. She was beautiful, even more beautiful than he remembered, dressed in chic black. Gone was the girl, here was the woman. He could have her if he wanted her. All he'd have to do is reach for that gold ring.
"Clark," she said.
She didn't rush to embrace him. He was grateful.
"Lana," he said quietly. There should have been more but he couldn't find it.
"I, uh, saw Chloe earlier. Her cousin is in town or she would have come."
Chloe would have made things less awkward. She understood the new Clark, Lana didn't. She only had memories of the old one. He wondered if they were good ones, or the ones where he lied to her, confused her, hurt her.
Lana squinted up into the sun as she studied his face. "Clark," she said finally. "What happened?"
He spoke softly. "I died. I came back."
"You were kidnapped."
"There's more than one way to die," he whispered.
Her expression twisted in pain. "But why....."
"I wasn't human." It came easier than he'd thought it would. "That's changed."
Really? Has it?
"I don't understand."
He looked down into her eyes. "Everything has changed. It will never be the same."
"I still love you," she said, and meant it. He could see it in her eyes.
Why then, had she gone to Paris? Why had she found another, while he died an agonizing death in a small, white room, far, far away?
"You loved a lie," he said softly. "And it no longer exists."
He walked away from her then, setting aside the tool he was using to weed Martha's garden. He walked away from her into the barn, silently climbing the stairs into the loft. For a moment he was afraid she would follow him. He waited, and heard the sound of a car engine.
She was gone, and he felt a spark, a spark of life in the form of pain. Burying his face in his hands, he slumped down to the couch, and gave way to grief.
He wanted to live again.
********
"I heard Lana came back with a new beau," Lex said quietly. Glass clinked. He poured himself a drink. It was a habit, not a drinking habit, but a thinking habit. As some people fluttered their hands as they spoke, Lex found it easier to gather his thoughts with a glass in his hand. "Have you met him?"
"No."
"Nice guy. I know his family. They'll take good care of her."
The conversation, if it could even be called that, ground to a halt. Lex quietly returned to his desk and sat down.
“What can I do for you, Clark?”
“Why are you waiting?” he demanded.
“Waiting for what?”
“You have the results of your father's research. I know you've looked at it.”
“Ah,” Lex said softly. He took a drink. “Yes. I did look at it. I'm sorry he put you through all that Clark. Maybe if you had trusted me I could have protected you.”
“I can't trust anyone.”
“Present tense.”
“Present tense. That's why I'm here.”
Lex regarded him carefully. He felt like a bug, a specimen, like he had when he'd been imprisoned. Lex had changed. They'd both changed.
“You think I'm going to reveal your secret to the world?” Lex chuckled. “And I do know your secret, Clark. My father didn't understand what his people were telling him. He presumed you were simply another sort of mutant. You aren't a mutant. You were never human, and you refused to tell them just what you are. I know something came to Earth during the meteor shower, something that wasn't a meteor. It was you, wasn't it?”
He didn't reply, and struggled to keep his fear at bay. “I'm still a prisoner,” he whispered.
A faint smile tugged at Lex's mouth. “Yes, you are.” He put his glass down on his desk. Glass on glass clinked. “Your abilities will come back.”
Bluntly: “I don't want them.”
“Perhaps not, but I do. A lot of people would. In fact, some people would be willing to put out a lot of money to buy them.” Lex leaned back in his chair. “And there's where my father was a fool. He spent two years studying you.” The smile returned. It was bad, that smile. “You've been telling me the truth all along haven't you? Clark Kent is nothing but a simple farm boy. Oh, but what's inside him...”
A chill ran up his spine. He wanted to turn away, not listen to what would come next. His fear screamed at him to run, run as far and as fast as he could away from Lex, away from Smallville, Kansas. He could not get back to the stars, but he could not stay here.
“We don't need you,” Lex said softly. “You see, I'm not unsympathetic to what you went through, Clark. It was entirely unnecessary for you to suffer like you did. When your body recovers from what my father's bungling methods did to it, I'll take it back.” Pausing, Lex allowed that to sink in before adding. “But we don't need you. You won't have to suffer again.”
He fled then, turning heel and all but running from the room, from the mansion. His lungs and limbs burned with his efforts as he jogged quickly down the curving drive toward the road. How long would it be before his abilities did come back? How long after that would it be before Lex came for him?
Lex was going to kill him. Clark wasn't so mind-addled not to have understood the implied threat. He would not be imprisoned the next time. The next time he would simply be killed and dissected.
He fled to the one person he thought could save him, who had saved him.
She had an apartment she shared with her cousin. Lois was out. Chloe brought him inside and got him something cold to drink. He'd run almost all the way into town. He couldn't stop his hands from shaking. She helped him hold the glass.
“Lex....” was all he managed before the dam broke.
He confessed to her everything he knew about himself, his homeworld, his life, his captivity. Every word was torture. Each day he'd spent trapped in that small white room had left a scar on him. He revealed them to her one by one as he told her the story of his slow spiral into madness.
“It's over, Chloe,” he concluded, his voice hoarse, his eyes burning. “My life here is over. They took it away, and I can never have it back. If I try, Lex will kill me.”
“Then you have to go,” she said.
Go. Go where?
“Chloe....”
She took his hand, urged him to his feet. “Come with me,” she said. “I have a secret of my own, Clark, and now that you've told me about yourself, everything makes perfect sense.”
********'
The crystal was the size of his palm, prism-shaped and unassuming. Polished quartz. A worry stone. Nothing special.
And yet....
Glittering light filled the hole in the cave wall like thousands of fireflies - or stars. Chloe had found his way back to the stars. They called to his wounded heart, his battered body, his crushed and damaged soul. He would be safe there among them.
He stood before the portal the crystal key had revealed. Silver light flowed over him, seemed to enter into him. For the first time in a very long time he felt warm again.
“It was a gift, from Jason to Lana,” Chloe said quietly. “I saw the symbol carved on it, recognized it as one of these....”
She stood behind him. He turned to look back over his shoulder.
“Just,” she said, tears filling her eyes and roughening her voice. “Don't forget me, okay?”
“Never,” he said softly.
My angel. My savior.
His gaze returned to the portal. Once committed, he could never go back. He could never again be human. Survival meant embracing his destiny and accepting himself for what he was - alien.
The stars beckoned him toward freedom.
All he had to do was let go - let go of Martha and Jonathan Kent, of the farm, Lana, Chloe, and....Clark.
“Clark....” Chloe whispered, but she did not beg him to stay. She urged him to go because she knew, because she loved him.
He took a step closer to the portal, and then another.
No more cold, white rooms. No more pain. No more fear.
Lex could not touch him. He would live again.
At the threshold he paused. She stood there behind him looking small, and frail - human.
He was so much more.
“I am Kal-el,” he said.
And returned to the stars.
He sent her a post card to let her know he was all right.
Chloe,
I'm finding myself. When I'm done, I'll be back.
Look up in the sky.
-CK